Tables of contents are to be found in many longer publications and act as a roadmap enabling the user to quickly find a particular section of the document. The ability to create tables of contents automatically is a useful facility and is found in most word processing and desktop publishing (DTP) programs. The mechanism used by most of these programs for generating the table of contents is what we might call style-tracking; one or more styles is or are designated as being associated with the table of contents. When the table of contents is generated, all text in the designated style(s) is added to the list of items, usually with the appropriate page number next to it. In this article, we will look briefly at how this feature is implemented in Adobe InDesign.

InDesign has three commands associated with the creation of TOCs, all of which are found under the Layout menu: Table of Contents Styles, Table of Contents and Update Table of Contents. The Table of Contents Styles command is used to specify the settings and attributes of the TOC. When you choose this command, you are given the choice of either editing the built-in, default TOC or creating a new one. As this choice implies, the TOC facility can be used to create a list of any items occurring within the document, as long as the text associated with the items uses styles.

The first TOC setting is the title which will appear at the top of the list of items, along with the style in which you would like the title to appear. Next, you need to specify which styles you would like to include in your TOC. All of the styles which your document contains are shown in a list on the right. Simply double-click on each of the styles you wish to include in your TOC, in order of priority. Finally, you need to specify the attributes of each of the styles which are to be included in the TOC. The key attributes are the level, the style you wish to use to list items at that level and the position (or omission) of the page number.

Once the TOC style definition is complete, you are ready to generate the TOC itself. To do this, choose Table of Contents from the Layout menu, select the name of the TOC you wish to create from the drop-down menu and click OK. The cursor changes to the loaded text icon; at which point just click to place your text. If you redefine the attributes of your TOC at any time, just use the Layout - Update Table of Contents to bring your listing up to date.